Blog Archives

Vancity business and personal account holders will experience significant service disruptions beginning 5pm on November 9, 2016 and continuing until mid-day on November 14, 2016.

It appears that you will not be able to:

– use online, mobile or telephone banking services,

– do any in branch transactions including sending or receiving wire transfers,

– make bill payments including CRA remittances,

– transfer funds using interac etransfers.

Business accounts linked with QuickBooks Online will need to be relinked with the software as all accounts will have new account numbers. Please edit the sign in information in QuickBooks Online with the new account number when it has been assigned.

Vancity has or will be mailing a “banking system upgrade business guidebook” to its business clients. This guidebook provides more information on the services effected. For more information please visit Vancity’s website or your local branch.

If you are considering upgrading your copy of QuickBooks to 2014, Staples has a pretty sweet deal right now. The regular price for Pro 2014 is $249. The deal they have right now is $100 off! You need to order it online as none of the physical stores in Vancouver appear to have it available (but you could double-check the stores near you by using the availability checker on the website).

Are you using QuickBooks Online (QBO)? Have you previously used the desktop version of QuickBooks? You may have noticed some differences. Have you noticed any differences? Things that bug you? Let us know if you have any tips that may help others with the transition.

These tips might help you make the transition to the online version.

We miss the “open window” list that is available in the desktop version. The only work-around we can see is to use your browser’s |go back| arrow. Instead of clicking and clicking if you’re trying to find a specific window, click and hold your mouse on the back arrow until you see the drop-down list of recent pages. You should see the previous screens listed and can jump back to that page.

Net amount of expenses not showing in transactions. If you’re used to using the desktop version, you will know that when you enter an expense in the “credit card expense” window or the “write cheque” one, you enter the total amount spent, choose the expense account and the tax rate. Once you do this, QB desktop version automatically re-calculates the figures and enters the net amount of the expense. In the online version, the net version does NOT appear. For example, if you purchased paper at Staples for a total of $112.00, if you choose “office supplies” as the expense account and GST/PST for BC as the tax item, the desktop version would show $100 in the “office supplies” line and $5 for GST and $7 for PST. In the online version, the “office supplies” line remains as $112.00. The background posting is correct (ie if you check your P&L, you will see there is a $100 expense for office supplies and a $7 amount for PST Expense and $7 to your GST account). This may be confusing if you’re used to the desktop version. We called QB and asked about this and they said this is just how it shows up in the online version.

Default type of tax calculation: in the same expense transaction window as above, there is a choice of “inclusive” or “exclusive” tax calculation. You should be choosing “inclusive”, but there is no way to make this the default so you need to remember to choose this option each time. We confirmed with QB that there is no way to set a default.

QuickBooks is now available in an online format. This means you don’t need to purchase and install software onto one computer. Instead, you access your file from any computer at anytime using QuickBooks’ cloud service. There is a monthly subscription fee, which depends on what level you purchase.

One key point of the online service is that you can use a Mac, which has been a stumbling block until now.

Note: at this point, there is ability to convert a desktop file to an online one, but QB is working on a conversion tool. It is unclear as to whether you can start a file online and convert it to a desktop version at a later date.